International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

Abusive partnerships: New forms of governance, new forms of abuse?

Mike Rowe

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To cite this document:

Mike Rowe, (2006),"Abusive partnerships", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 26 Iss

5/6 pp. 207 - 219

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Abusive partnerships

New forms of governance, new forms of abuse?

Mike Rowe

University of Liverpool Management School, University of Liverpool,

Liverpool, UK

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to critically consider the role of partnerships in regeneration.

There has been a proliferation of partnerships at local, sub-regional and regional levels, that has

brought new people together around a shared agenda, and has sought to challenge and change the

ways in which mainstream public services are delivered.

Design/methodology/approach – This article uses a qualitative approach drawing on previous

research work and using narrative to construct a series of metaphors to provide greater levels of

explanation and understanding of partnerships.

Findings – The current approach to partnership working arises principally from analysis of the

weaknesses of fragmented services, it is also attractive to those who seek to open up the cosy,

inefﬁcient and, at times, corrupt worlds of local government. This is shown through an innovative

typology of partnerships.

Research limitations/implications – While there are sound policy reasons for engaging in the

game of partnerships, there are dangers in underestimating the capacity of public agencies to adopt

and adapt the language of partnership, without genuinely engaging with the intent behind the policy.

Practical implications – The implications from this article have practical relevance for those

working in public policy and for those involved in partnerships.

Originality/value – By drawing upon examples of the abuse of partnership arrangements, this

article provides an original perspective on those phenomena that might be an indication of trouble.

Keywords Local government, Regeneration, Community relations, Partnerships

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

A plethora of material suggests that partnerships, while a good idea on paper, are

particularly problematic in practice (Mayo, 1997; Byrne, 2001; Geddes, 2001; Lister,

2002; Lowndes and Sullivan, 2004; Mayo, 1997; Mayo and Taylor, 2001; Powell et al.,

2001; Taylor, 2000, 2001, 2003). The focus of much of this writing has been upon the

tensions and dilemmas inherent in a policy that seeks to engage people from across

sectors in decision-making and to challenge and change mainstream services. More

recently, formal evaluations of the New Deal for Communities regeneration programme

have indicated similar problems and themes (NAO, 2004; NRU, 2003). However, this

paper will seek to approach these themes from a different perspective. Yes, the idea of

partnership is hard to put into practice, but the problems are aggravated by the way

some seek to adapt to and undermine the policy. This is particularly the case with local

authorities but it is also true of other public agencies and voluntary and community

organisations. In doing so, I approach the subject having seen some of the potential

fulﬁlled in practice (Rowe and Devanney, 2003) and as a disappointed observer of a

failure to learn from and develop on such experience (Rowe and Taylor, 2005).

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/0144-333X.htm

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International Journal of Sociology and

Social Policy

Vol. 26 No. 5/6, 2006

pp. 207-219

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0144-333X

DOI 10.1108/01443330610674251

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Before going on to look at these issues, a few words about the nature of the evidence

deployed in this piece. It does not arise from any formal research. It is in the nature of

the narratives presented here that they are not acknowledged openly, and certainly not

to outsiders. Instead, the narratives have been gleaned from conversations with

practitioners, often in informal settings, leaked conﬁdential reports and other material,

including press coverage. Only narratives supported by two or more sources have been

used. At the same time, and for obvious reasons, the examples are presented

anonymously. Indeed, to ensure that no case can be easily identiﬁed, I have combined

some aspects of different cases while endeavouring to present narratives that neither

exaggerate nor mislead (Watson, 2000).

I hope the narratives told will echo the experiences of many of those engaged with

partnerships, whether as participants or observers. They point to issues of power and

inequality within partnerships of real signiﬁcance to those concerned with the themes

of regeneration and inclusion. These issues, while not universal, are common. Much of

the practitioner literature fails to seriously address questions of power. Indeed, the

NRU only recently seems to have taken questions of governance particularly seriously

following the publication of the recent NAO report (NAO, 2004; NRU, 2004). On the

other hand, academic literature suggests that questions of power represent almost

insurmountable barriers to the practice of partnership (Southern, 2002). It is as an

attempt to get beyond these responses that this paper might contribute to developing

our understandings of the forms that partnerships take. More than simply exposing

particular activities, I wish to draw wider lessons of relevance to policy makers,

practitioners and academics. Clearly, this presents some problems. The material in this

piece might be all too easily dismissed and ignored, unsupported as it is by traditional

evidence. However, a detailed description of case studies, citing of evidence and

reference to real events might easily reveal the subjects of this work and expose the

whistleblowers. Given this, I hope the reader will accept and bear with the use of the

narratives. If it rings true to practitioners and researchers familiar with the ﬁeld, then

the learning might also carry weight.

The new agenda of partnership

During the 1980s and the early 1990s, the Conservative government was unwilling to

trust local government with public services and, not least, with regeneration. Instead,

they turned to the business sector, forming Urban Development Corporations and

Enterprise Zones to administer funds (Roberts, 1999). The private sector would bring a

focus upon economic beneﬁts, thus creating jobs, generating innovation and bringing

ﬁnancial disciplines not to be found in the public sector. While this approach was

consistent with the government’s policies, privileging the needs of business over the

interests of a wider community, there were problems and tensions in the programmes

that emerged. In a number of instances, there were serious concerns about the way

funds were disbursed, the adequacy of procedures to ensure against conﬂicts of

interest and the governance arrangements within (NAO, 1997, 2002). Such concerns

were not limited to the conduct of business in a regeneration context but became

widespread as private sector management practices permeated the public sector

(Committee of Public Accounts, 1994; Committee on Standards in Public Life, 1996,

1997a,b). By the 1990s, some of the government’s hostility to local government

dissipated, in part because of a recognition that a business and property-led approach

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to regeneration could not resolve some of the deeper social problems in Britain’s cities.

Partnerships between public and private agencies became the vehicle for delivering

change in the inner cities. However, City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget

were not immune to governance problems and the effectiveness of partnership

arrangements varied greatly (Rhodes et al., 2003).

The Labour government, elected in 1997, built upon these nascent partnerships,

extending the scope to encompass the voluntary and community sectors and to

embrace a much more holistic agenda. Fundamentally, the government argues that, by

working across organisational and sectoral boundaries, better value will be derived

from public spending, particularly at a local level (Cabinet Ofﬁce, 1999; DTLR, 2001;

SEU, 1998). At the same time, the business sense of the private sector would be

tempered by the social concerns of the public, voluntary and charity sectors. More

speciﬁcally, the beneﬁts to be derived include:

greater sharing of information and resources between public agencies, and

between the public, charity, voluntary, community and business sectors;

better coordination of public services, securing efﬁciencies both in terms of cash

savings and improved delivery;

engagement with local communities to better plan and design service provision,

thus improving take-up and outcomes;

through participation, build capacity and “social capital” in excluded

communities;

allow for experimentation and learning from small-scale initiatives,

mainstreaming these where they prove effective;

more effective interventions to deal with complex social problems (the “wicked

issues”);

greater accountability and oversight of public services; and

improvements in local democratic life, both through participation in

decision-making and in elections.

Local Strategic Partnerships, Community Strategies, Community Empowerment

Networks, Neighbourhood Renewal Funding and a host of other initiatives have

sought to develop the local infrastructure to enable these beneﬁts.

Central to the understanding of partnerships, particularly in a neighbourhood

renewal context, is the role of client groups and resident members of the community.

Perhaps more than any other participating sector, residents bring a previously

untapped perspective to the challenge of resolving difﬁcult social problems and

exclusion. They might bring a form of intelligence and, in a sense, power to a

partnership, an understanding of what does and does not work, for whom and why. By

not simply criticising local services but also by participating in the development of

alternative arrangements, the local community brings both accountability and

legitimacy. As such, the way in which they are engaged in the process of partnership

working is central to an understanding of the effectiveness of a partnership.

How to effectively incorporate the diverse range of experiences and voices to be

found in excluded communities is a central problem for partnerships (Jones, 2003;

Lowndes and Sullivan, 2004; Mayo and Taylor, 2001; Taylor, 2000, 2001, 2003). Are

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individuals on boards sufﬁcient? How are they to be accountable for the views they

express? Is consultation a sufﬁcient substitute for wider participation? For local

authorities, and particularly elected members, the development of other forms of

democratic expression has sometimes been interpreted as a threat to their role as

elected representatives. How can different forms of democratic expression sit

alongside, or even complement each other? In essence, partnership communicates a

general understanding while concealing much that is very different in the way

individuals interpret the new priorities of consultation, participation and

empowerment (6, 1997; Rhodes, 1997). Nor are multiple understandings simply an

academic affair. Indeed, differences in understanding are, perhaps, more common and

evident in the patterns of practice to be observed across the country (Rowe and

Devanney, 2003). The language has changed but, beneath the facade, there is much

that has remained the same. A number of possible reasons for these problems can be

found in academic and practitioner debates.

First, there is genuine confusion about the idea of governance at a local level,

particularly with respect to how the numerous elements of the Local Government

Modernisation Agenda (DTLR, 2001) ﬁt with elements of the Neighbourhood Renewal

Strategy (SEU, 1998). Indeed, it is not clear that the connections have been clearly made

in Whitehall and, at times, guidance seems to conﬂict – e.g. how does strong local

leadership ﬁt with empowerment and partnership? (Lovell and Rowe, 2002; Rowe,

2003; Broussine and Fox, 2002) As a consequence, the new governance in practice often

takes the form of uncoordinated and unconnected strands at a local level. One part of a

local authority leads on the community strategy, another consults separately on, for

example, education provision, while yet another tries to inform a best value review

with user views.

Second, public agencies often lack an understanding of how and capacity to engage

in dialogue with their own frontline staff, let alone audiences beyond the public sector,

particularly excluded communities but also the voluntary and small business sectors

(Geddes, 2001; Mayo, 1997). Nor is there an understanding that the culture of public

agencies needs to change in order to effectively engage in partnership working

(Broussine and Fox, 2002). For many local authorities, consultation elicits the usual list

of complaints, so what is the point? For others, community forums are dominated by

the “usual suspects” with a particular axe to grind. In this context, it is unsurprising to

ﬁnd public authorities avoiding and ignoring consultation or, in some cases,

manipulating it (Lovell and Rowe, 2002).

Third, even where there is evidence that public agencies understand the policy,

there is signiﬁcant reluctance to genuinely engage with it. For many agencies at a local

level, partnerships are not about the sharing of power but are more concerned with the

presentation of change in order to secure additional funding (Rowe and Devanney,

2003). “Shopfront partnerships”, dominated by one of the main public agencies, often

but not always the local authority, present all the trappings of engaging excluded

voices while relinquishing little power. Crucial in maintaining this control is the

Accountable Body, responsible for ensuring the ﬁnancial probity of partnerships in a

regeneration context. Able to inﬂuence and veto spending decisions, the Accountable

Body can strangle initiative with rules while awarding resources to agencies able to

meet their stringent requirements, thus distorting the practice of partnerships.

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Finally, and perhaps most crucially, even where there is genuine commitment to the

ideas, partnership requires a signiﬁcant investment of time and energy, often for

relatively meagre returns in terms of ﬁnancial resources. At the ﬁrst sign of difﬁculty,

it is easier to argue for an end to genuine partnership than it is to struggle to make it

work, with all the investment, on the part of all sectors and individuals concerned, that

that entails. Despite its early commitment to broad-based partnerships, the current

government appears to be turning towards a much narrower model in the form of

Urban Regeneration Companies, in part as a reaction to the problems experienced with

New Deal for Communities, amongst other programmes.

In the context of multiple partnerships, operating in the same geographical area,

drawing on the same communities for volunteers, often engaging with similar

“clients” but with different objectives, it should come as no surprise that the

putative beneﬁts of the new forms of governance are often lost in practice. Close

attention has been paid to the minutiae of processes and of power imbalances

between participants in partnerships (e.g. Hastings, 1996; Southern, 2002). However,

it is not the purpose of this paper to further elaborate on the problems posed by

different forms and understandings of partnership. Rather it is to go beyond these

understandings to consider the form that relationships within partnerships take. In

so doing, I intend to begin to explore some of the more psychological dimensions to

failure and indicate the potential of such insights as the basis for intervention in

struggling partnerships.

Narratives of abusive partnerships

The ambiguity, confusion and lack of enthusiasm with which partnerships are

sometimes approached are aggravated by efforts to maintain control of the

arrangements while presenting the impression of genuine partnership working.

Some such efforts are more deliberate than others. However, irrespective of whether

they are deliberate, each has unintended and damaging consequences. The remainder

of this paper will present anonymised narratives, some drawing upon more than one

programme, of efforts to direct, control or contain the work of partnerships. The order

in which they are presented does not reﬂect any simple scale of seriousness but a

progression from relatively crude and simple efforts to more complex and problematic

relationships. After each, some indicators of problems within a partnership will be

drawn out.

Infantilising partnership

Awarded New Deal for Communities (NDC) funding, the local authority established a

partnership that sought to bring a range of people around the table. However, unwilling or

unable to trust the partnership as an autonomous body, the authority seconded staff to the

new organisation and put in place a tough Accountable Body agreement that ensured all

decisions were thoroughly vetted by the authority. While not intended as a way of ﬁxing

decisions, partners and particularly residents, balked at the unnecessarily heavy-handed

rules and procedures introduced. Decisions to hinder progress on some applications for funds,

many from voluntary and community groups, were contrasted to the successful bids

submitted by public agencies. It appeared to be a deliberate attempt to control the funding

rather than a cautious approach to partnership working. The partnership soon struggled

under the burden of suspicions and hostilities.

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The tendency to introduce unnecessarily strict systems and controls, to pack theme

groups with professionals and to undervalue the perspective of residents and other lay

people is, perhaps, the most commonly encountered form of abuse. It often arises from

a genuine concern to support a partnership and to ensure the proper use of funds.

Seconding staff may be intended as a sign of commitment and goodwill. But, to local

people, it can seem overbearing at least and cynical at worst. In one case, upon which

this story is drawn in part, the local authority was appalled and offended by

accusations of overbearing and dominance. Senior councillors pointed to examples of

partnerships struggling without proper systems of appraisal, approval or ﬁnancial

control as reasons for wishing to ensure that “their” NDC was well run. However, their

approach to the problem has soured relationships within the partnership and, having

been brought to the surface, will take some considerable effort to heal.

In such partnerships, simple indicators of problems include:

a preponderance of staff seconded by one public agency;

public agencies dominating decision-making in, for example, theme or working

groups; and

patterns of spend that indicate a bias towards local public agencies with few

small and/or innovative projects.

Yet, at least one can say that, in such instances, there is no explicit intent to undermine

the practice of partnership. This is in contrast to other forms of abusive partnership.

Shotgun partnership

In order to secure Neighbourhood Renewal Funds (NRF), a community was required to form a

Local Strategic Partnership (LSP). The local authority intervened at an early stage,

interpreting the funding as “theirs”. Senior councillors and ofﬁcers believed the process of

partnership to be an unnecessarily time-consuming way of allocating resources. Rather than

waste time over a relatively small amount of money, senior ofﬁcers were invited to identify

priorities for spending to be met from NRF (in their enthusiasm, ofﬁcers managed to identify

twice the funding available). All available funding was committed for three years. When the

LSP ﬁnally met and was tasked to develop a programme within a very short timescale, they

were presented with one already completed. The local authority did not even attempt to

pretend that this was up for discussion. The purpose of the LSP was simply to allow them to

draw down the funding. A subsequent evaluation diplomatically suggested their approach

was unfortunate. Progress on the priorities of the partnership has been hindered by this

opening ploy, one that soured relationships between the major public agencies across the

authority. Indeed, the community representatives now take up an adversarial stance vis-a

-vis

the local authority.

Rather than negotiating priorities with partners, establishing baseline information,

setting targets and developing interventions, all of which takes time, there is a

tendency among some in the public sector to simply act. In most authorities, there are

ideas that have been ﬂoated before but, for lack of funding, have never been taken

forward. Every new funding stream is another opportunity to try to secure resources,

regardless of the ﬁt with the objectives of the funding stream or with the needs of

intended beneﬁciaries. For some public agencies, successfully securing funds is an

important indicator of the effectiveness of ofﬁcers, encouraging a crude

budget-maximising approach (Niskanen, 1971; Dunleavy, 1991). In this case, the

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selected projects were largely a range of standard responses to crime (CCTV, street

lighting and mobile youth teams) and educational underachievement (family liaison

ofﬁcers, truancy sweeps and library improvements). Creating trusting relationships

with public, business and voluntary agencies on the LSP after such a cynical

plundering of funds is unimaginably difﬁcult. How does a partnership discuss joint

working and collaboration against this background?

In such partnerships, simple indicators of problems include:

a lack of clarity about purpose, roles and responsibilities;

opaque decision-making processes;

projects that show no signs of innovation or of joint-working and are often the

continuation or extension of existing initiatives;

projects with little focus upon areas of deprivation or priority client groups; and

highly structured meetings with game-playing and formalised conﬂict.

While this represents a comparatively crude strategy for securing resources, others

have similar purposes but operate within a more “sophisticated” political climate.

Partnership of convenience

Children’s Fund resources are intended to support innovative projects targeted at children at

risk of, for example, exclusion from school. Funds should be spent by a partnership that

engages and is informed by consultation with parents and children. Awarded a small amount,

one local authority created a partnership structure. Bringing together they major providers,

notably education, social services and health (though with the latter in a very minor role) with

their constituencies of voluntary sector providers allowed funding to be diverted to

supplement existing funding. Each participant gained funding with minimal scrutiny of

project proposals. At the same time, access to resources bought off any possibility of

dissenting voices, particularly among those voluntary sector organisations providing

services to the black and minority ethnic communities.

Drawing upon the darker side of networks, the partnership thus created bound

participants into a complicit relationship. Each beneﬁts without being open to scrutiny

from the others. Externally, it presents all the appearance of a partnership, with

appropriate paperwork detailing discussions and decisions about funding priorities,

conﬂicts of interest etc.

However, analysis of the way in which funds have been spent in one such

partnership and a comparison of recipients to the membership of the partnership and

the theme/working group members indicates that only two organisations not directly

engaged in the partnership received any funds in the ﬁrst round of over 20 awards. In

total, 95 per cent of funds were distributed to organisations participating in the

decisions of the partnership. The majority of funds went to the local authority, but key

voluntary and community organisations also received their share. Revealing a degree

of cynical calculation, the proportion of spending on groups that classiﬁed themselves

as serving black and minority ethnic communities almost exactly mirrored their

proportion in the population as a whole. And as an indication of the degree to which the

investment represented innovation, brief descriptions of projects included the

following phrases: “the fund will supplement ...”; “fund money will be used to

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continue paying ...”; “the project aims to enhance existing ...”; and “allow the centre

to keep running to full capacity ...”.

In such partnerships, simple indicators of problems include:

opaque decision-making processes;

projects that show no signs of innovation or of joint-working and are often the

continuation or extension of existing initiatives;

projects with little focus upon areas of deprivation or priority client groups;

theme or working groups dominated by service providers; and

a spending proﬁle that mirrors the participants in the partnership.

While, in a local context, this approach might be seen as politically “sophisticated”,

ensuring funds are disbursed to particular groups and interests, it is neither a

partnership nor are its chances of radically altering the experiences and services

available to the intended beneﬁciaries great. But it stops short of being actively

destructive.

Abusive partnership

One regeneration partnership was formed in the face of opposition from the local authority,

which had wanted other wards to beneﬁt. Residents formed a board, which they dominated.

However, they lacked experience in the basics of establishing an organisation, setting up

systems and overseeing staff. They turned for advice to their Accountable Body, a public

agency that had stepped in, in place of the local authority. The Accountable Body advised on

the appointment of a chief executive without a job description or any clear lines of oversight

from the board. They established project approval and monitoring processes that lacked

clarity or robustness but over which they had complete control. In effect, the organisation

lacked any rules or structures. The Accountable Body and chief executive, between them,

took control of decision-making, the funding and the board. A select group of board members

was embraced by the chief executive and the Accountable Body and given privileged access

to decision making. Other members of the board were excluded from inﬂuence. As a

consequence, the two groups of board members effectively formed opposing voting blocks

over the main issues. Meanwhile, the chief executive and the Accountable Body were able to

work deals to spend funds on capital projects and investments with little regard to

cost-effectiveness or conﬂicts of interest. While board members blamed each other for the

partnership’s lack of impact, the funds were rapidly depleted. Why abusive? Because the

Accountable Body and chief executive quite deliberately manipulated people, their

weaknesses and aspirations, in order to pit them against each other.

Having fallen foul of the local authority, this partnership welcomed the salvation

offered by another public agency. On the surface, a number of local priorities were

being delivered, though the impact was questionable, but others were not. At the same

time, a series of large capital projects, not envisaged in original plans arising from

consultation, emerged. When some residents realised that they had lost control of the

programme, they raised objections and sought to challenge decisions made in ways

they could not penetrate. However, their choice of language and tactics meant that they

were easily dismissed as troublemakers. Arguments about priorities and principles

were countered with accusations about personal conduct. The board slowly slid into

accusations, factions and bitter inﬁghting.

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In essence, the abusive partnership is similar in appearance to an infantilising one.

However, the actions are much more conscious and deliberate. The Accountable Body

saw the regeneration programme as an opportunity to enter new territory, to fund a

number of ambitious schemes and to increase its local and national proﬁle at the

expense of the local authority. It entailed paying lip service to the idea of engaging

residents while manipulating the way in which they were involved. In such

partnerships, simple indicators of problems include:

an overbearing and intrusive role for the Accountable Body;

opaque decision-making processes;

the Accountable Body dominating decision making in, for example, theme or

working groups;

blurred conﬂicts of interest procedures;

lack of reporting to and oversight by the board;

lack of engagement with other local public agencies; and

bitter and highly personal arguments on the board and between the board and

staff.

These symptoms, and other combinations of them, are to be found in many

partnerships. They indicate imbalances in power within partnerships. Yet they are not

new, nor unique to partnerships, regeneration or, indeed, the public sector. As indicated

earlier, the recent history of regeneration in the UK is scattered with similar concerns

and issues. The Committee of Public Accounts and the Committee on Standards in

Public Life have highlighted similar issues elsewhere in the public sector. In the private

sector, concerns over the lack of accountability of executives to their boards, the

distribution of power within boards and the relationship of boards to shareholders and

wider stakeholders have dominated debates about corporate governance for many

years (Warren, 2000).

However, the issues have been allowed to develop and even been aggravated by the

government’s desire to let local communities take control of neighbourhood renewal.

The issues that arose in a number of the narratives presented here were well known to

the relevant Government Ofﬁces whose responsibility it is to oversee and assist

partnerships. Yet they have proven remarkably slow and unwilling to react, in some

cases arguing explicitly that it is for partnerships to develop their own processes and

structures. In other cases, Government Ofﬁces have been complicit in the initial

arrangements and, thus, hamstrung when problems arose.

But other public bodies have oversight of neighbourhood renewal. At a local level,

the Audit Commission has limited access, often in its role as auditor of the

organisations performing the Accountable Body role. At a national level, the National

Audit Ofﬁce has a limited capacity to do more than a ﬁnancial audit of 39 NDCs, 88

LSPs with NRF, countless action zones and other partnerships across the country. Its

recent value for money study of NDCs could only look at a handful in any great detail

(NAO, 2004). So, even though public auditors now have an explicit responsibility for

scrutinising governance issues and standards of conduct, they are not in a position to

carry it out to any great effect.

At the same time, it is not an easy task to spot a “good” partnership. Most

partnerships will exhibit one or more of the symptoms identiﬁed in this paper without

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their necessarily being abusive. Yet it would be fair to comment that the absence,

indeed opposite, of the symptoms outlined above would constitute grounds for

conﬁdence in the strength of a partnership. A board and staff team drawing from a

range of backgrounds and experiences; an open and transparent decision-making

structure; clarity of purpose and vision; innovative and cross-cutting projects;

collaborative arrangements with partners; and constructive board discussions would

all indicate a healthy partnership (Rowe and Devanney, 2003).

Reﬂections

I have argued elsewhere (Rowe and Devanney, 2003) that the failure to recognise

questions of governance is a serious one. The ideas of network forms of management,

upon which the policy of partnership explicitly draws, are most commonly discussed in

the context of self-generated and voluntary groups, within and between organisations,

developed over time. Most commonly to be found within professions, notably amongst

doctors, network members often share common perspectives and backgrounds. In such

contexts, and over time, relationships can be created in which solidarity, altruism,

loyalty, reciprocity and trust are generated (Thompson, 1993). When drawing diverse

participants with different perspectives and knowledge bases together in a relatively

short timescale, partnerships in a neighbourhood renewal context seek to draw on the

positive ideals of networks without understanding the problems that the context

presents. It is not surprising, therefore, that they confront some of the darker sides of

the idea of networks: exclusion; opacity; collusion and corruption.

Yet the forms of abuse described in the partnership arrangements above are not

new. They are precisely those to be found in Urban Development Corporations, in a

variety of other arms length public agencies and in the private sector. The misuse of

power and authority, control of decisions and processes and manipulation of boards

are not new. They take place in a new and particular context but are, fundamentally,

tried and tested techniques. What is perhaps new is the passivity of government (and

other oversight agencies) in the face of evident problems. In a number of the cases,

from which the examples cited above are drawn, substantial evidence has been

available to government, politicians and auditors for some years. Yet in all cases, they

continue, largely unchecked. This is the result, to a large degree, of an unwillingness to

interfere in a “bottom-up” approach to regeneration combined with a lack of capacity in

overseeing bodies to either identify or resolve problems. And it is to the understanding

of the nature of tensions within partnerships that this paper seeks to contribute.

Throughout this piece, I have used the metaphor of partnerships as marriages. This

is not merely to generate witty sub-titles for each of the narratives. Rather, it serves the

purpose of highlighting the importance of relationships in the management of

multi-sector partnerships (Kets de Vries, 1999). Understanding the problems and

tensions that arise in partnerships in terms of relationships does not just better our

understanding of the problems but also suggests ways of resolving them. While the

tendency is for government ofﬁces to intervene in problematic partnerships by

imposing rules and codes of conduct to suppress dissent and disagreement,

interventions informed by an understanding of relationships might suggest a very

different approach. In some of the narratives presented in this piece (the infantilising

and shotgun partnerships), the differences in perspective are profound. Resolving the

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tensions actually requires recognising them openly, allowing conﬂict to come to the

surface.

Challenging people’s behaviour and attitudes is, however, neither easy nor

something with which oversight bodies readily engage. Yet increasing the capacity of

Government Ofﬁces and of auditors to recognise the symptoms of abusive

partnerships and to engage in challenge is a ﬁrst step towards addressing some of

the problems that have emerged from the new regeneration agenda. Without these

skills, the good side of partnerships will continue, in many if not all cases, to be

overshadowed by the darker side.

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About the author

Mike Rowe is a Lecturer in Public Management at the University of Liverpool Management

School, University of Liverpool, UK. He can be contacted at: Michael.Rowe @liverpool.ac.uk

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